Dangerous Ties

by Devyn Quinn

  At first Nikki didn’t understand. Then the meaning behind his words dawned on her. “Are you saying I’m a demon now?” Her nervous system still buzzed from the ferocious infusion of pure unadulterated energy invading her body.

  His gaze a glittering mass of dancing greens and glowing coppers, Jackson nodded. “Very much so. You survived your baptism of pain, fire, flesh, and blood. Only the strongest can.”

  Swallowing hard, Nikki felt her lips twitch upward. “That’s a good thing, right?”

  “Depends on your point of view,” Jackson said slowly. “It does make you one of the eternal damned.”

  Nikki considered his words, then shrugged. “Pretty much the story of my whole life.” She mock sighed. “I always have to do things the hard way.”

  Jackson’s cock stirred. “Speaking of the hard way, my dear, we have some unfinished business between us.”

  “I thought we had finished,” Nikki teased.

  His smile took on that familiar wicked cast. “We have only just gotten started.”

  Before she could say another word, Jackson kissed her, mouth covering hers to share the forbidden. His tongue sparred with hers. The sexual tension between them was still there, as strong as ever. If nothing else, it had intensified to an almost unbearable level.

  Ordering her body to relax, Nikki sparred right back, as much the aggressor now as he was. The blood lingering on his lips tasted of energy, enchantment, and pure lust. Her stomach fluttered with the realization. Her blood. Her magic. Her lust. Desire blossomed all over again, stronger, more intense.

  Hungrier.

  Jackson’s hand rose to cup her breast, teasing the weight of it, before dragging his thumb across the peak of her distended nipple. His cock hardened. Everything inside her went all liquid again.

  Shuddering with raw need, Nikki slowly drew back. Reminding herself to breathe, she reached up, cupping his cheek with her palm. Everything had changed now. She wouldn’t be the victim anymore. “So, Jackson,” she drawled behind a spreading smile of gratification. “You know this means I expect you to be the one tied to the bed next time.”

  A grin spread across Jackson’s face. “I think I can handle that,” he murmured. Then he kissed her, long and deep.

  With her entire being, Nikki knew that his kisses would never be enough. She wanted more. And would take it out on him.

  One sweet, excruciating lash at a time.

  Captive Heat

  Jodi Lynn Copeland

  1

  “Goddamn you!” It wasn’t enough he’d been an asshole when alive, Ken had to haunt her from the depths of hell.

  This time it wasn’t Leia Jenson’s mind or body her ex-husband abused, but the pricey pumps she’d flung at the burning backwoods hovel she’d once called home.

  Who the hell paid over half a grand for shoes anyway?

  A woman trying to outrun her past.

  “I don’t have to outrun it now, you bastard!” A self-inflicted bullet to Ken’s temple took care of that. Not nicely, but messily.

  The rotting paneled walls of the one-room shack were splattered with the grisly remains of what had been his suicide scene. Leia hadn’t gone inside. She couldn’t even stomach the thought of peering through the set of dirt-stained windows, for fear old memories would grab hold. The sheriff who called to tell her Ken was dead and that her ex had left her the shack in his will—apparently to give her a final taste of his sick sense of humor—had forewarned her about the shape of the place. The cop had been scanty with the details. Just told her enough that her mind could fill in the gruesome blanks.

  Only the blanks weren’t so gruesome.

  She was glad Ken was dead. Glad the asshole was finally getting his due. If she’d ever questioned the afterlife, then Leia had to accept it now. Had to believe he was dancing to the flames of the devil’s caustic beat.

  Which meant he would be too busy to fuck with her shoes.

  It wasn’t the bastard reaching from the gates of hell to destroy the slingback, gold-sequined Manolo’s she’d bought two years ago as a final severance to the pathetic woman of her past. It was the acrid smoke rolling off the shack’s dilapidated roof, stinging her eyes and screwing with her mind. Making those old memories surface even though she hadn’t gotten any closer than what kicking the barely hinged door in and tossing a gasoline–soaked rag, followed by a pack of lit matches, had required.

  Either gray matter was a hell of a fire conducter, or Ken still kept stacks of porn magazines lying around. Her little rag fire had turned to an inferno in minutes.

  Flames licked at the small, dirty windows on either side of the doorway, blackening the glass. From Leia’s cross-armed vantage fifteen feet away, the heat coming through the open door turned from steamy to sweltering.

  Mindful of her bare feet and how stupid it had been to walk even a quarter mile down a decently cleared trail in three-inch heels, she put another ten feet between her and the hovel.

  She wouldn’t be escaping this overgrown, secluded stretch of woods and returning to her life in the city until the shack was ashes. Looking skyward, past the towering tops of decades-old elms, she attempted to escape the memories.

  Hazy purple-black filled a summer sky that had been blue minutes ago. The color obliterated any chance of escape, watering her eyes and fucking with her mind even more. Reminding her of all the times she’d worn the ugly shade on her body, of all the shit she’d endured. The way Ken had handled her, called her a fat-ass good to be nothing but his house bitch and sex slave.

  Her ass was big. She’d come to terms with her size along with a whole lot of other things the last two-and-a-half years. But she was no one’s slave.

  Then why won’t the memories quit?

  An explosion erupted from somewhere inside, knocking the question from Leia’s mind. She focused back on the doorway as a second blast followed. Then more.

  The first of the windows exploded, spewing fragments of glass for yards as if the winds of hell themselves spurred them on. Panic slammed into her belly as the last of those fragments barely missed clipping her side, and she backed farther down the trail by rote.

  Son of a bitch! This was supposed to be an easy means of destroying Ken’s meager possessions while severing any final ties between them. It wasn’t supposed to be dangerous.

  But just as the ties between them had been dangerous from nearly the moment they’d said “I do,” this situation became dangerous as hell in the blink of her stinging eyes.

  Pure TNT seemed to detonate inside the shack, the caterwaul sound near deafening. Reflex had her hands jerking to her ears. Too late, she realized she should have covered her body. The second window exploded in a blaze of orange and black fury. Shards of discolored glass arced toward her. This time they didn’t miss but moved past the lavender silk of her designer shorts and tank combo to slice at bare skin.

  Covering her head with her hands, Leia half fell/half dove to the trail. The air whooshed out of her as her breasts and belly collided with the hard earth. The breath dragged back between her lips, even the low air pungent now, and she gagged out a cough. Pain scorched through her thigh. Burning frissons of ache speared upward. She bit her lip against the hurt, tasting blood, savoring that bit of life-confirming metallic warmth as she pinched her eyes shut and waited for the explosions to end.

  A deceptive calm descended after nearly a full minute, broken only by the crackle and hiss of the fire. Adrenaline pumping through her system, she gingerly turned on her side. Through bleary eyes, she took stock of her injuries. Dirt and nicks covered her legs, and a chunk of concave glass protruded from the inside of her lower thigh, just past the cuff of her shorts.

  Brown-bottle glass.

  “Shit. Shit!” Of course, the bastard had alcohol inside. Drunkenness had always been the fuel that fed his rage.

  Popping sounded to her right, keeping her attention on the present when it threatened to stray to the past. The popping was far too close. Holding her breath, Lei
a followed the direction of the sound…and panic closed in all over again.

  The fire was no longer confined to the shack, but eating away at the rain-deprived woods and quickly making its way toward the trail.

  Sickness settled in her gut along with bleak reality. She hadn’t set out to be dangerous. But she’d been damned dangerous, damned harmful. And there was nothing she could do but run.

  Panting, despite her attempts to not take in more of the toxic air, she shoved to her feet. Razor-edged pain rifled up her leg and had her sucking a hard breath between her lips. She pushed the air back out and pushed her feet down the path, ignoring the sting of fallen twigs and bramble as they cut into the soft pads of her feet. Ignoring everything but the need to find help somewhere in this godforsaken nowhere.

  She almost made it to her car when another explosion hit. Once again, the sound was too close. She’d come nearly a quarter mile. But it was right there, right behind her, emitting a force strong enough to topple her to the ground and knock her out cold.

  Ken wasn’t dancing to the devil’s beat. He was sitting right beside the horned demon, enjoying a flask of brandy and a deep-seated laugh over Leia’s misery.

  Hands ran along her body, and she steeled herself against the physical assault that would follow. Only, these hands didn’t feel vile. Even with her eyes closed, she could tell they were much smaller and softer than her ex’s—not gentle, but not truly abrasive either.

  They moved with efficiency, stroking over every inch of her as they bound her upper body.

  Bound?

  Leia jerked alert. Ache speared through her with the move, and she realized she’d been steeped in a foggy semiconsciousness. How long? And what had happened to warrant her pain?

  Behind their closed lids, her eyes stung like a bitch. She opened them slowly, expecting to find a paramedic tending to her, strapping her to a gurney until he was certain she wouldn’t harm herself by moving. Bile rose up in her throat, and a dry, wheezing sound left her lips as she saw her freakishly diverse surroundings.

  No paramedic saw to her welfare. No straps hooked her to a gurney. She stood in the center of what appeared a cell carved out of the barren earth while a white-haired midget worked the underwear down her dirt-and blood-caked legs.

  Horror and confusion clamped together as a tight ball in the pit of her stomach.

  This can’t be happening.

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. Opening her eyes revealed the same irrational scene. Thick green, flowerless vines circled just above and below her exposed breasts. Another set hooked around her arms, pulling them behind her back, thrusting the ample mounds of her breasts upward and outward. A ceiling of moss and tree roots leaked in light from overhead, and dirt walls surrounded her. Six feet at most separated her from reaching out and touching those walls.

  Three of those walls. The fourth wall was at least fifteen feet away and shrouded in darkness. Anything could lurk back there.

  Death. Freedom. Another white-haired midget.

  Desolation taunted from the fringes of Leia’s conscience. Her breathing went ragged as she strained to see through the dark, to see what may well be her fate. She couldn’t even make out shadows.

  What was this place?

  “Where am I?” The tremulous question scratched at her throat, low and husky, not her natural voice but a side effect of smoke inhalation.

  Oh, God. The fire!

  How quickly the flames had gotten out of her control, escaping the shack to attack the woods, came slamming back to her. The blaze had been fast on her heels. The final explosion directly behind her.

  She’d considered death lie waiting in the darkness, but was she already dead?

  No, she couldn’t be. Not and feel so alive, so aware of every touch of the midget’s warm fingers as they caressed her ankles and then lifted her bare feet from the cool ground to remove her underwear. She couldn’t be dead and feel so awash in sensation—terror, disgust, and an unfathomable intrigue—as the midget looked up and revealed herself to be a four-foot tall, generously endowed, nude female.

  Female, but not human.

  Elfin ears, multi-pierced with ruby studs, protruded from beneath the waist-length waves of her white hair. Stark-blue eyes and blood-red lips contrasted dramatically with a ghostly pale face. The female’s lips curved with unmistakable sensuality as she straightened with a thick length of vine in one hand. Her other hand reached out, below the swell of Leia’s belly, toward the juncture of her thighs that was now as naked as the rest of her.

  Small fingers cupped her mound, and Leia’s heart kicked against her ribs. Gasping out a strangled sound, she attempted to step backward, to fling the perverted little bitch off her. Her feet made it a few inches before they were left to tread in place. No vines restrained her lower half, but she could feel something cold and hard pressing against her wrists. A pole of some sort lined the crack of her ass.

  Bound and staked. Helpless.

  She gulped down a hard breath, fighting off the desolation that bulldozed forward this time as hysteria. But shit! Being at the utter mercy of anyone’s touch was the makings of her worst nightmares.

  Was she dead after all? Was this hell?

  The female squatted, bringing her heated gaze even with Leia’s sex. Eagerness shimmered in her eyes as two of her fingers pushed through Leia’s blond bush, lightly penetrating her slit. “Shall I bind her here as well?”

  Past the panic, revulsion boiled in Leia’s blood. She clenched the muscles of her sex and shifted her hips away from the assault, only managing to wedge the pole snug between her butt cheeks. As if oblivious to her resistance, the female took her fingers deeper, probing the inner walls of Leia’s pussy, handling her with damning efficiency once more. Fondling her until the panic began to ebb to something far more fearful.

  It was as if the female somehow knew her body intimately, knew exactly where to touch to have sensual warmth building against Leia’s every want to stop it.

  But, no, she wasn’t responding to this. She hated it!

  “Don’t touch me, you bitch!” Rasping the words, Leia heaved at the captive vines, wrenching until her arms burned with the effort.

  The female didn’t even look up.

  Her fingers continued their violation, pumping into and petting Leia’s sex. One finger pulled out suddenly, lifting the hood of her clit and stroking the bead, and arousal pitched through Leia as a fireball of erotic sensation. She clamped her lips down around a moan. Her pelvis’s blatant thrust wouldn’t be stopped.

  Lifting her hands away, the female leaned back and let out a lusty laugh. Her breasts shook, calling attention to erect nipples pierced with ruby studs that matched those that lined her ears. “Her clit is ripe. A crotch vine would serve her well.”

  A crotch vine? Is she mad?

  What of Leia herself? What was wrong with her body to respond so eagerly? Either she was still unconscious and having a nightmare, or somehow her mind was being controlled, her feelings skewed.

  Squeezing her vaginal muscles as tightly as possible, in the hopes of hindering further penetration, she forced herself to concentrate. The female was talking to someone…or some thing. Whichever it was waited in the darkness.

  Her skin tingled with the unknown. Her mind and heart raced with the idea she really was in Hell and it was Ken the blackness harbored. Ken somehow controlling her body. Ken about to lay a final siege to her body and soul.

  Narrowing her eyes at the darkness, Leia feigned bravado. If she were already dead, cowering would be futile. “Are you too much of a chickenshit to show your face?”

  The thing stepped out. Not a thing, though. Not Ken either. But another man.

  Or, quite possibly, a god.

  Developed flanks escaped a leopard-print loincloth. Above the low-rise waist of the loincloth, sun-drenched flesh covered a chiseled torso. Raven black hair curled over a rock-solid chest. Straight locks of the same shade hung freely around a lean face, the blunt end
s brushing along wide shoulders and rolling in glistening waves over rounded biceps. He was the kind of hard-bodied guy whom fantasies were built around. The kind of guy she would never have a chance with.

  Like a panther on the prowl, every move he made was pure grace. Every inch of his tall frame and the unyielding line of his mouth emanated danger, darkness. Vengeance burned in his obsidian eyes as he moved closer.

  Ignoring Leia’s question, he nodded at the female. “Not until she’s cleaned and shaved.”

  With the deeply spoken words, the female’s fingers pushed back between Leia’s thighs. She’d forgotten about keeping her sex clenched while taking in the man she presumed to be her captor, and the female easily slipped inside her sheath.

  “She’s not dirty here.” Working her fingers against disturbingly aroused tissue, the female flashed a licentious smile. “Just wet.”

  “Your thoughts are as good as mine, Aubrie.” His expression stayed firm, but wry humor clung to the words. With a flick of his wrist, he indicated Leia’s crotch. “You may have a taste.”

  Horror returned as a maelstrom. Leia’s eyes flared wide, her gaze zipped downward. Aubrie’s warm hands settled on her upper thighs and pried her legs apart. The female shoved her pale face against Leia’s sex, nuzzling the lips of her labia past her pubic hair before flicking her wet tongue into her slit.

  No! Goddammit no!

  The words reverberated in Leia’s spinning mind. She fought against her bindings, attempted to clamp her knees together, knowing already the moves were pointless. Having learned well that fighting the invasion only made the pain that much more acute. Only, the pain wasn’t acute. Truly, there was no real pain. No bile churning in her belly. Just a moist pulsing in her core that spoke of traitorous, hungry urgency.